


so the lantern in your heart won't fade

by exhaustedwerewolf



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bonding Over Shared Trauma, Character Study, Guilt, Healing, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, It's not as dark as these tags make it sound I swear, Kissing, M/M, Nightmares, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Study, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exhaustedwerewolf/pseuds/exhaustedwerewolf
Summary: Percival de Rolo and Kashaw Vesh understand one another, and maybe that's all either of them needs.





	so the lantern in your heart won't fade

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jon Bellion's 'Guillotine.' Hope you enjoy!

He's Keyleth’s first kiss, his _best friend’s first kiss_ \- so he shouldn't be looking at him like _that_ at all, but there's a sharpness to him- to his eyes, to his cheekbones, to his tongue, that looks like it could get Percy hurt, and if he isn't ever the hapless moth drawn over and over to the open flame. There’s no smoke without fire, after all.

He catches himself staring at the scars the very first time they meet- admonishes himself inwardly for it, feels his own itch under his shirt. Rips his gaze away abruptly when he's caught looking, casts his eyes down in pathetic lack of apology. The others talk, and laugh- the cleric stares at him. He keeps his mouth shut. They're both human, and that shouldn't matter, but at some point it starts to- the two of them stumbling down into the sunken tomb, into pitch blackness, and neither of them say anything when they quietly graze walls, stumble on unexpected thresholds, better able to catch the tell-tale sounds of one another’s missteps for their own blindness.

Nothing special- they were never supposed to _be_ _anything-_ no veins pulsing hotly with infernal blood, or fey magic woven into their bones, no ability, even, to see their own hand in front of their fucking face in the dark. Percy keeps his mouth shut about this, too. (They ask him where he came from when they haul him out of that cell, and he keeps his mouth shut.)

(A scroll is placed into Uriel‘s upturned palm with a hushed whisper, and he keeps his mouth shut.)

(They practically beg him, crowded around him in his workshop,

“We never really found out why you were in that prison cell…”

"We’ve never asked you before. We didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. But…”

"I know you're right." He says, truthfully, yet still they have to draw it out of him like blood.)

(Percy knows when to shut up and study the floor, knows too well, sometimes, and for the first time in his life he thinks he's not the only one who understands what it is to have been _meticulously educated_.) They've hardly spoken ten words to one another when they're in their first fight together, when dark smoke flows from Percy's very lungs to engulf their common enemies, when Kashaw sets them burning from the inside out, and there it is, setting his face flickering- the open flame. They were never supposed to be anything.

He was never meant to rule.

This cleric was never meant even to rise.

They were never supposed to be anything, and yet... Kashaw hesitates over Vex's body, and he may not know it, but two lives are in his hands at that moment. Clumsy, destructive human Percy, staggering along behind the big kids, a child out past his curfew, winces and watches in silence, says nothing when his scars _glow_ crimson and his eyes brim with a particular sort of fear that Percy has only ever seen in the mirror, but-

He casts the spell.

It's months before they run into each other in Vasselheim, after the fall of the Conclave. Percy has too much black powder in his packs and his heart is thrumming as if just as potentially explosive, but he says his greetings and before he knows it they're sitting down together for a drink. It's longer before Kashaw catches him without a shirt and it's his turn to stare at linear, methodical old red tinged marks. There's a lot of closed doors and slammed-shut conversation and a lot of silences when it comes to the things that matter.

But eventually, Kashaw talks- about the salt, the sweat, the blood- Gods, it was everywhere, She didn't even bother to vanish it away. Screaming into Her fingers. Foolishly, stupidly, naively, trying to kill Her with the very same knife, as if his blood meant a thing.

Percy talks- The clatter of the cutlery, the sound of bodies hitting the white stone floor. Chains rattling in the darkness. The glint of the tools, the burn of the scalpel and the soothe of Her hand against his cheek. What She did when he didn't ask prettily enough.

It’s sweet novelty, at first, to wake beside someone, clawing and gasping, who knows without having to ask if it was a nightmare or if it was a _nightmare._ Novelty turns to cautious hope turns to habit, faster than he expected- like tiny, cautious flowers, bursting out of nowhere too soon after snowmelt.

“We have no idea what we’re fucking doing.” Kashaw says mildly, one very late evening or very early morning, tracing circles on Percy’s back lazily. Percy laughs into his pillow.

“What did you expect from a member of Vox Machina?” He responds, levering himself up, twisting his head back over his shoulder, to kiss him quick. As he pulls back, turning to lie on his back now, he adds; “I never know what I’m doing.”

Kash’s almost permanent frown becomes, for just an instant, a poorly suppressed smile.

“Or why you’re doing it?” He volunteers, arching a brow.

Percy reaches out to manoeuvre Kashaw- so gently that he can hear the rustle of the quilt, the fond huff that Kash sighs out- so that his lover is looking down upon him, still half-smiling. He runs a hand through Percy’s white hair, and Percy passes a thumb along the curve of his cheek, under his golden eye, and then moves his hand so that it rests over his heart.

“I know precisely why I’m doing it.”


End file.
